Family History in the Pale of Settlement

Main menu

Post navigation

Charlotte and her Father: Late 1920s

I discovered a box of photographs I had forgotten that I had and had never gone through.I was thrilled to spot a photograph of Charlotte with her father, Isadore Riskin!

The photo is not in the best shape as it has been crumpled and bent and the image is not that clear. At the bottom, Charlotte has written, “Me and My Father.” She looks to be about nine or ten years old to me. Since she was born in 1919, that would be put this photo around 1928 or 1929. On the 1930 census, they lived at 43 Townsend Street, Port Chester, NY. I wrote about this on an earlier post: Why Port Chester?

And that address is what is written on the back of the photo.

This image is about ninety years old. Charlotte had many health problems and yet she lived longer than her cousins Murray and Eileen (Isidore and Celia Scheshko’s children). She passed away 19 December 2007 in Stamford, Connecticut.

Isn’t it?! So precious to see her out with her dad. Can you believe it about those photos? They are not all old like this. Some are, some are of the gardener’s mother’s family, and some are of our kids when they were little, etc.

Fantastic, especially with the handwritten notation on the back! I have a large number of my grandmother’s old photos, with no notes, and no one in the family who would recognize the people in them, are still alive. Doesn’t make the photos any less special, but knowing who they were would certainly add context.

Oh, I feel for you. The many unmarked ones I have of my family drive me crazy! Amazingly, I have been able to identify some over time, largely because of blogging about them. This blog is newer, so I hope over time I can find names for some others and will post the ones i need identification of before too long.

The Squire’s aunt kept a photo album-scrapbook for about thirty years, starting in her early teens, with everything beautifully labeled – dates, people, places. She had always promised it to him, and when she died he reminded her daughter to “send me your mom’s photos”. Several weeks later he received a lumpy envelope. Miriam had torn every single picture out of the book! When he called her to find out what had happened, hoping that perhaps he could match the black paper on the back of the pics with the spots on the pages, she didn’t seem to realized the enormity of what she had done. “I didn’t know ya’ll wanted all thet ol’ writin’ and stuff. Ah threw thet book in the far.” It was the closest I’ve ever seen him come to crying.